The Enough Project, a US-based watchdog which aims to end genocide and crimes against humanity in Africa, has urged the US House Foreign Affairs Committee to utilise "modernised pressures" against what it terms “a regime that has wrought havoc within Sudan and the region for nearly three decades”.

Brad Brooks-Rubin, Enough’s Policy Advisor and Policy Director at The Sentry, had the opportunity to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organisations at hearing on Wednesday entitled “The Questionable Case for Easing Sudan Sanctions.”

His testimony follows the release this week of an Enough project report Sudan’s Deep State, which brands the Al Bashir regime “a kleptocracy with economic activities that have devastated the Sudanese economy and resulted in underdevelopment”, and illustrates how an inner circle within Khartoum has privately expropriated oil, gold, and land for self-enrichment and to maintain control through corruption and violence.

Alongside other distinguished witnesses, Brooks-Rubin made the case that, in responding to the current sanctions discussion around Sudan, “the fate of the 5-Track Plan and the comprehensive sanctions should be a lower priority, because it creates a false policy choice (comprehensive sanctions versus nothing) over benchmarks that do not fundamentally alter the nature of a regime that has wrought havoc within Sudan and the region for nearly three decades. Congress should take the lead in designing a clear US policy approach, one that deploys the types of modernised pressures that can generate meaningful leverage for creating real and lasting change in Sudan through a Human Rights and Peace Track.”